Every Day is Marne Gras

bronx zoo

in march the giraffe house was empty:
a single bench, bolted down
straw spread over the ground
a backdrop of still clouds on sky blue, a tall, empty room.
a pen moving in my lap, on the bench, bolted down, scratching
like a lottery ticket
like there’s a one in ten chance i would
uncover something good
about the way i write about being here with you.
at first three shadows, and then
three long necks stretch
over my shoulder,
watch me de-etch ‘i miss who we used to be’ for the ninth time
in my notebook.
startled, six wet, brown eyes take my pens in their teeth,
bend at the hips
to restructure my line breaks;
remove references and
add visually interesting rhymes, space
for my silence to breathe
words back into my own life.
they stop to munch on hay and revise,
through lanky sighs,
they tell me i can’t write that i miss her like spinach misses eggs in the refrigerator’,
that maybe i should think about doing something else if my best is an allusion to frittata.
there’s a great new exhibit about bats in the Hall of Darkness, they say,
black tongues licking my looseleaf.
or maybe the lion feeding at 2.
But I want my pen back, I need that notebook,
I thought I was alone in here.
They stamp knock-kneed and bony, move to eat my crumpled cross outs,
we would be at the top of the food chain if the food chain was all about editing poetry
they screech, reach for the buttons on my jacket
but I am zipped up and gone
off to the butterfly garden
the sun in my face
to see what the world of invertebrates has to offer.